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An experienced captain whose boat was anchored near Mike Lynch’s superyacht, which sank in a severe storm off the coast of Sicily on Monday, said the sunken vessel appeared to have capsized because its masts were extremely tall.
“In my opinion there is something wrong with the stability,” Dutch captain Carsten Werner told the Financial Times about the sinking of the 540-tonne Baysian, which killed six people, including a British technology entrepreneur and Mr Lynch’s daughter.
“This extreme mast has a centre of gravity that’s too high,” said Berner, referring to the world’s tallest aluminium boat mast.
He denied an initial assessment by the Italian coast guard that the Besien was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. He said: “I was in the same place. I had two masts, 28 and 29 metres above the deck. Hers had one mast, 73 metres above the deck.”
From his own boat, Berner witnessed the Basian being lost in a fierce storm, and later rescued 15 survivors from the Lynch family yacht.
He estimated the winds were “violent, very vicious,” reaching 12 on the Beaufort wind scale, or hurricane strength. “Tons of water came down. I’ve never seen a water tornado like that,” he added.
Berner, 69, a 41-year veteran of the industry, said he heard from a survivor he rescued that the Baysian sank in less than two minutes.
Closed-circuit television footage from the shore showed the yacht, its mast lit, tilting in the wind before the lights went out as rain obscured the image.
After viewing the footage, Berner believes it shows the Baysian capsizing within a matter of seconds.
Giovanni Costantino, chief executive of Italian Sea Group, which owns yacht builder Perini Navi, previously told the Financial Times that the Bayesian was “designed to be absolutely stable”, with its extra-tall masts supporting it.
He suggested the yacht’s crew had not followed proper safety procedures. ISG declined to comment on Werner’s conclusions.
The Baysian’s captain, James Cutfield, is being questioned by investigators but has so far not commented publicly about the disaster.
Berner said the Baysian crew told him they had “locked the vessel up,” which contradicts ISG’s claim that the yacht’s hatches had been left open.
It also said Cutfield, one of 15 survivors rescued by Berner’s boat before dawn on Monday, was “fully involved in the rescue effort.”
Cutfield remained on Berner’s boat to continue the search for survivors and then transferred to the Coast Guard.
When the storm hit, the yacht captained by Berner, the Sir Robert Baden-Powell, was anchored in what should have been a relatively safe anchorage off the coast of Porticello, near the Baysian.

During the storm, Berner started the engines and tried to keep the ship in place, with its bow pointing into the wind.
The Baysians were behind them, having looked over their shoulders multiple times throughout the storm to avoid possible collisions. “I think (they) did the same thing,” Berner said.
At one point, a passenger on the Berner alerted him to what appeared to be an “above water structure” near them.
Borner said he turned around and saw a large triangle in the midst of a flash of lightning, adding: “I think they saw the boat capsize. I turned around and I saw the bow of the boat and then the boat was sinking.”
Italian officials said prosecutors investigating the sinking of the Besien were looking into possible charges of “negligent wreck of a ship”.
If the Ron Holland-designed, British-registered boat, built in 2008, capsized, one of the reasons may have been its so-called lifting keel.
ISG says that when the yacht’s keel is raised to enter a shallow anchorage or harbour, the Baysian can withstand a list of up to 73 degrees without capsizing.
In its down-keel (safer position), the ship would list at up to 88 degrees, with its masts above waterline in a nearly horizontal position. It is not yet known whether the keel was up or down.
Berner said he had been aware in recent years that global warming was affecting the Mediterranean weather.
“There is a new phenomenon occurring in the Mediterranean called Medicanes (Mediterranean hurricanes),” he said, adding that he had begun to notice a trend towards more intense Mediterranean storms over the past five to 10 years.